
Class 



LT1 1 8Tf 

Book jl±L2AjL 

1853 



Author 



Titie 



Imprint 



OPO 10—7484 








OREGl 

rulI 

CO. 



- 1 



- U.S. 



?- a 



?- a 



^ 4 



x 



MANS TRUE DESTINY. 



Si 



%Kttnhnxnh 2Ukess, 



FIKST GRADUATING CLASS 



g 

£ 

£ 

£ 
£ 
£ 

£ 

to 

£ 

£ 

£ 

.£ 

£ 
£ 
£ 



3FRANKLIN AiND MARSHALL COLLEGE! 

"1 



LAN C A 8 T E R , P A . , A U CI US T 31 s t , 18 5 3 , 

/ 

BY 

REV. JOHN W. NEYIN, D. D. ? 

LATE P B E S T D E NT OF 3J A B S H A L I. C Q L L E E . 
[PUBLISHED BY THE GBADUATING CLASS.] 

CHAMBERSBURG, PA: 

PRINTED BY M. KIEFFER & CO. 

1853. 



mmrn^ffl3zms?mmxttmxmmttttm?mm *mm:m m ttzmT- 



MAN'S TRUE DESTINY. 



unhnxnU J^Mnsa, 



FIRST GRADUATING CLASS 



FRANKLIN AND MARSHALL COLLEGE, 

LANCASTER, PA., AUGUS T 3 1 s t, 1 8 5 3 . 

BY 

REV. JOHN W. NEVIN, D. D., 

LATE PRESIDENT OF MARSHALL COLLEGE, 
[published by the GRADUATING CLASS.] 



CHAMBERSBURG, PA: 

PRINTED BY M. KIEFFER & CO. 

1853. 



Llmi 

1253 



In excbanoro 

Peabody Inst . n*-.e 

Baltimore 

1928 



ADDRESS. 



Young Gentlemen : 

By invitation of the Board of Trustees 
of Franklin and Marshall College, and at your own special and 
earnest request as a Class, I stand before you on this occasion 
to pronounce a few parting words in the name of the Board, 
in the name of the Faculty, and in my own name, in the way 
of Baccalaureate Address. The position is to myself one of 
more than usual interest and solemnity. The duty which it 
calls me to discharge, belongs of right to the relation I have 
borne to you for years as the President of Marshall College. 
It is not as a stranger, nor as the temporary representative 
simply of the government of this new institution for the service 
in hand, that I now speak to you, as a class, for the last time. 
I appear before you rather in the character of a father, whose 
responsible privilege it has been to preside over the course of 
your college education from its commencement to its close, and 
whose concern for your future welfare is conditioned thus by 
innumerable cares, and sympathies, and reciprocal affections, 
the proper growth of such endearing connection, which reach 
away back into days and years that are past. This relation 
itself, however, so far as the idea of outward office is concern- 
ed, has also passed away. All that remains of it is its moral 
life and power, which ought to be perpetual. In the present 
transaction, accordingly, the official in every view may be re- 
garded as overwhelmed and lost in the personal ; while all the 
circumstances of the occasion conspire to crowd the personal, 
at the same time, with memories and associations of the most 
solemnly affecting kind. Any College Commencement is sol- 
emn, mirroring as it does, for every thoughtful mind, the great 
law of change, by which, in the drama of full life, one genera- 
tion is continually passing away to make room for another. 



But on this occasion, we have something more than such an 
anniversary in its ordinary form. I see before me the first 
Graduating Class of one institution, -which is, in a certain sense, 
at the same time, the last of a whole series of such Classes be- 
longing to the history of another. These seem to rise in long 
review before my mind, and to join their presence with yours 
in the tender solemnities of this parting hour. You will not 
take it amiss then, if I consider myself speaking to them along 
with you, in the present address. It is in virtue of a past re- 
lation only, at all events, a relation which has now come to an end, 
that I am here to speak at all. Let this relation then be own- 
ed to-day in its broadest extent. Let me feel that the farewell 
words I now utter, are dedicated as a tribute of affection to all 
the Alumni, to all who have ever been students of Marshall 
College. 

The true destination of man, the proper end of his being and 
life, lies beyond the present world in an order of things which 
is supernatural ; and it is absolutely necessary that he should 
Jcnow this, and have supreme practical regard to the fact, in 
order that he may not live in vain. 

This is the theme on which I propose to speak ; the one great 
thought I wish to bring before you, and to leave with you, in 
the full earnestness of its own proper consequences and rela- 
tions. May the Spirit of all truth and grace so hallow the 
naturally sacred associations of this present occasion, that they 
may serve to fix deeply and lastingly in your minds the living 
force of the thought itself, so that it shall be found hereafter 
the pole-star of your existence, lighting it till life shall end on- 
wards and upwards always to the glorious immortality of the 
saints in heaven. 

The necessity of owning a supernatural destiny in the case of 
man, lies to a certain extent in his natural constitution itself, 
in the relation he is seen and felt to bear to the world around 
him in his present mortal state. This relation in one view is 
of the most close and intimate kind. The organization of the 
world, as a system of nature, -comes to its completion in his 
person. This is signified to us very plainly in the Mosaic ac- 
count of the creation ; where the whole magnificent process, 
rising gradually from one stage of order and life to another, 
is represented as reaching its climax finally on the sixth day, 
when God said : " Let us make man in our image, after our 
likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, 
and over the fowls of the air, and over the cattle, and over all 



the earth, and over every creeping thing that crcepeth upon 
the earth." Man thus is strictly the perfection of nature, the 
crown of its glory, the very centre of its life. In him the 
world comes to its last, deepest, fullest significance and sense. 
So to some extent even in his mere bodily organization. But 
far more still in his soul, in his intelligence, in the self-acting 
power of his will — that higher life of reason, of which only the 
most dim and remote foreshadowings are to be met with in the 
lower spheres of creation, but whose appearance here at once 
proclaims itself to be the central light, that reflects back on 
every other part of the system its true meaning and form. " In 
such relation simply to the present world, our human intelli- 
gence and will, notwithstanding the spirituality which belongs 
to them in their own character, are to be regarded as apper- 
taining still to the constitution of nature. They are the sub- 
limation of this indeed to its highest potenc}^, its most ethereal 
quality and sense, and present it thus under a form where to 
be true to itself it ought to pass away in the presence of a high- 
er and more enduring economy ; but the sublimation itself, the 
taking up of the world of nature into the world of mind, is now 
in and of itself the subjection of it in this way, to the claims 
and purposes of every such economy above nature. The pro- 
cess may stop with the mere intellect utilization, so to speak, of 
the present order of things, the world as it now stands ; and 
then it matters not how far the activity of thought may seem 
to go, exploring the depths or scaling the heighths of God's 
creation ; it matters not with what flights of science or art it 
may appear even to pass over the boundaries of time and space, 
and to hold communion in its own way with what it is pleased 
to denominate the absolute and the eternal, all will remain in 
the end a revelation of the life of nature merely, and nothing 
more. The mind of Humboldt, regarded as a mirror simply of 
the outward world he describes, is of one order with Cosmos, 
whose image it serves so magnificently to reflect. Mirror, 
image, and object, belong alike to the sphere of nature, and 
have to do only with its organization as such. So deep and 
far-reaching is the relation, by which man belongs to the pres- 
ent world, stands in it, moves in it, finds in it his natural and 
congenial home. He is the consummation of nature. It un- 
folds the entire volume of its wealth ; it comes to its full efflo- 
rescence, only in his person. 

But with all this, or rather we may say for this very reason, 
the life which belongs to him in the order of nature, is for him 



6 

always something incomplete, a form of existence which mani- 
festly does not find its full and proper end in itself, but needs 
and seeks this continually in some higher and different consti- 
tution of things. In this respect, man differs from the mere 
animal and the plant. Though the fulness of nature be in him, 
far more than it is in them, he cannot, like them, rest in it as 
the whole comprehension of his being. They do so, just be- 
cause they are less than nature in its full sense Their exis- 
tence is rounded in by it on all sides, and made complete after 
its own kind, in the bosom of the general life by whose stream 
they are borne. But man is himself, as we have just seen, the 
end of nature, the point where its whole process reaches its 
ultimate destination. How then should he find in it his own 
destination or end ? The universal constitution of the present 
world, viewed in its relation to man, carries in it thus a plain 
intimation that he is formed for a higher sphere of existence, 
that the life of nature is designed to be in him the beginning 
only and preparation of a life above nature, and that he can 
fulfill his destiny only by entering into felt communication 
with the powers of this super-natural life, and by proposing it 
to himself always as his last object and aim. The world, as a 
system of nature, completes itself in man, becomes in him a 
moral world, a world of intelligence and active will, in order 
simply that it may, through him, become linked, under such 
form, with another economy far more glorious than itself. 
Without such object and end, it must be regarded as an insup- 
portable vanity. In itself, it is made up of perpetual revolu- 
tion and change. The fashion of it is forever passing away. 
Its best realities are always like a dream or a shadow. It is 
everywhere an effort after that which is not, a type that labors 
to express its own sense, an unfulfilled prophecy which strug- 
gles towards its accomplishment in something beyond itself. 
To suppose such an order of things brought to its full conclusion 
in man's consciousness, made clear to itself here, as it were, in 
the full perfection of its vanity, without any farther promise or 
prospect, would be to turn this human consciousness, the high 
prerogative of reason, into the greatest vanity and most deplo- 
rable misery of all. That cannot be the meaning or end of 
God's natural creation. It looks upward towards man from 
all sides, not that it may stop there as an eternal irony upon 
itself, but that by him and through him it may be enabled, as 
it were, to transcend itself, and to make room thus for a new, 
higher creation, in which all its transitory show shall be brought 



finally to an end. Nature reaches its chief purpose and ulti- 
mate destination in man, and, in doing so, refuses to be 
acknowledged as in any way Ms end, but shuts him up rather 
to the necessity of seeking this in some other order of exis- 
tence altogether. 

And is it necessary to add, that what is in this way contin- 
ually proclaimed by the general constitution of the world, finds 
its full echo in the moral nature of man himself? Whatever 
relation his intelligence and will may bear to the present 
world as such, they carry in their very constitution at the same 
time, no less distinctly, a necessary reference also to some- 
thing beyond this world, to a higher economy, which is felt to 
extend over it in the form of truth and law, and in which alone 
is to be sought and found its highest and last end. The 
human mind, while it forms the natural summit and necessary 
crown of the whole inferior creation, includes in itself also 
what surpasses entirely the measure of this creation, capacities, 
affinities, tendencies, inborn necessities and wants which it has 
no power to satisfy, and that call continually for that which it 
does not contain. It is only in virtue of such higher nature 
indeed, that man is set rightfully over the world, and appointed 
to rule it for the glory of God ; the intelligence that qualifies 
him for this being in truth a superior order of existence, which 
places him above the world as well as in it, by reason of what 
it is in such more than simply natural view. It is only as 
made in the image of God, that mind in this case is commis- 
sioned to exercise dominion over nature and matter ; which at 
once implies, that to be faithful to itself, and true to its high 
trust, it must hold itself steadily in union with God, and seek 
in Him always its last destination and end. Thus it is, accord- 
ingly, that the soul of man finds it forever impossible to be 
either wholly or finally satisfied with the present world, and so 
long as it seeks to be so is tormented continually with a sense 
of falsehood and vanity. Whatever it may be for inferior 
orders of life, the present world is not, in any true sense, an 
end for man, and the attempt to make it so must always be 
felt as the power of a perpetually living lie, which carries 
along with it its own damning punishment w T herever and how- 
ever it may prevail. There is no material difference here 
between one form and another of such a worldly life. It may 
be rude or refined, grossly sensual or eminently spiritual ; all 
comes to the same thing at last, an overwhelming confirmation 
of that old experience : " Vanity of vanities — all is vanity and 



vexation of spirit!" The desires of the mind, as Paul terms 
them, have no advantage in this respect over the desires of the 
flesh. Nay, the greatest vanity of all, perhaps, is science, 
walking among the stars in its own way, and yet never, in fact, 
transcending the universe of nature, the order of the world as 
it now stands, by a single act of faith. 

But it is in the sphere of religion and conscience, especially, 
that the necessary relation of man's life to an order of things 
which is above and beyond nature, so far as his own conscious- 
ness is concerned, comes most of all into view. Religion has 
no meaning except as it carries with it a reference always to 
some order of this sort, and without such reference there could 
be no place for it in the human spirit. Whether the religion 
be true or false is of no account as regards this point. What 
we are concerned with is simply the general idea of religion, 
the possibility of it in any form. This, of course, is something 
which lies back of all positive systems, to which the name may 
be applied. No outward teaching or tradition, no divine reve- 
lation, even, could cause religion to exist in any form among 
men if there were not in them previously a religious nature, a 
capacity for religion, needing to be called into exercise in this 
way. Now it is of this general capacity we say, lying, as it 
does, at the ground of all religions and making them possible, 
that it carries in it a necessary reference always to an economy 
which is beyond and above nature, and thus becomes an unan- 
swerable argument, throughout the world, for the truth and 
importance of the thought we have in hand, namely, that the 
true end of man's life, his proper destiny, is to be sought in 
the world to come and not in that which is now present. For 
the sense of religion, in some form, is as universal as our 
human nature itself, and forms an inseparable part of its con- 
stitution ; and it includes in itself everywhere, also, the assu- 
rance of its own legitimate authority, and its right to be 
regarded as a supreme power in the organization of our life. 
The want it expresses is felt to be the deepest, the end it seeks 
the most absolute, in the mysterious economy of our being. It 
is not hypothetically or problematically only, but with full 
categorical imperative, that the chief end of man is referred 
here to another world, and that he is required to subordinate 
to this all other ends as of merely secondary account. Such 
is the natural testimony of the soul, with regard to its own 
destination. No force of error or corruption can ever reduce 
it to silence. It speaks in the individual conscience of every 



9 

man. It is heard in the religious faith and worship of nations, 
handed forward as a sacred tradition from one generation to 
another, deep answering unto deep, as it were, in the vast and 
mighty abyss of the human spirit, and the voice of ages, like 
the sound of many waters, uttering itself forever in one and 
the same awfully solemn tone. 

Infidels sometimes make it an argument against the whole 
idea of a revelation, and so of a strictly supernatural destiny 
for man, that the organization of nature is complete within 
itself, and that it offers no room directly for the apprehension 
or acknowledgment of any higher system. The supernatural 
as related to the natural must, of necessity, be miraculous ; and 
the miraculous, according to the celebrated sophism of Hume, 
must ever meet an overwhelming contradiction from the uni- 
versal experience of our present life, which is conditioned 
throughout by the constitution of the world as it now stands. 
In these circumstances, all positive systems of religion, falling 
back, as they do necessarily, on some supposed revelation, are 
to be regarded as visionary and false ; and still further proof 
of which may be found in their contradictory character, as 
well as in the palpable absurdity and immorality by which 
most of them belie at once their own high claims. These 
manifold superstitions in the name of religion, monstrous abor- 
tions as they are of the human spirit, all pretending to rest on 
supernatural facts, show only how liable men are to deceive 
themselves in this direction, and how little weight is to be 
attached to any such pretension in any quarter. Thus runs, 
in brief, the sceptical argument. But its show of wisdom is 
entitled to small respect. It comes, at most, simply to this, 
that the order of nature is not itself the order of the superna- 
tural, that the second absolutely transcends the first, and that 
there is no room, therefore, to conceive of the first as itself 
producing or demonstrating the second. Most certainly nature 
includes no provision in its own constitution, as nature merely, 
for the production or verification of that which is positively 
above nature. Such want of capacity, however, to go beyond 
or transcend itself, to be at one and the same time what it is 
and what it is not, is something very different from the suppo- 
sition of its being actually at war with all that may be supposed 
to exist beyond its own sphere. Between the natural and the 
supernatural in this view, as we have now seen, no such antag- 
onism in fact has place, but just the reverse. The world as 
it now stands, the cosmos whether of Humboldt or of Kant, 



10 

has no power, it is true, to affirm supernatural realities in their 
own proper form ; they lie over its horizon ; but it goes far to 
show negatively and indirectly their necessity, and to turn the 
eye of expectation and desire towards the region in which they 
are found. Time points always towards eternity. Nature 
cries aloud for that which is higher, greater, and more endu- 
ring than itself. The world that now is, with man in the cen- 
tre of it, is a riddle whose burden can find no relief except in 
the thought of a world to come. The whole moral and reli- 
gious side of man's life especially proclaims, with uncontrolla- 
ble witness, his supernatural destiny, and leads him to ac- 
knowledge his relation to the invisible and eternal through all 
ages and times. It is not true, that the ideas of miracle and 
revelation do violence to his nature ; on the contrary, he feels 
them to be in full harmony with its inmost wants, and, as it 
would appear, is unable to live without them indeed in any part 
of the world. False religions, in this way, are no argument 
against the truth of religion itself. They only show how deeply 
seated the idea of religion is in the very constitution of 
humanity ; how irresistibly this looks and tends towards what 
is beyond the world of nature for its proper completion ; and 
how natural and reasonable it is, therefore, to believe, that 
provision should be made for the satisfaction of so deep a want 
in some real way. This universal demand among men for re- 
ligion in some form, both proves the reality of the supernatural 
relations on which the whole idea rests, and creates a presump- 
tion at the same time, not against, but powerfully in favor of 
any system which may present itself with the proper creden- 
tials of a true revelation. 

Such a revelation, it is plain, the whole case requires. The 
voice of nature, and the testimony of the soul, refer man for 
the end of his being to another world ; but they have no power 
to set before him the actual realities of this world in their own 
proper form; their utterances, as we have already seen, are 
negative rather than positive in their character ; and, for this 
reason, even the truth which they proclaim may be said to be 
wanting in full security and force. To the solemn question : 
"Where shall wisdom be found; and where is the place of 
understanding?" the answer they return is: "Man knoweth 
not the price thereof; neither is it to be found in the land of 
the living. The depth saith, It is not in me; and the sea 
saith, It is not with me. It cannot be gotten for gold, neither 
shall silver be weighed for the price thereof. It cannot be 



11 

valued with the gold of Ophir, with the precious onyx, or the 
sapphire." In other words, the true destiny of man, the pro- 
per end of his life, is something which, according to the testi- 
mony of the world itself, is not to be found in all that it con- 
tains, nor to be represented for a moment by its richest forms 
of wealth It belongs to another order of existence altogether. 
" Destruction and death say, We have heard the fame thereof 
with our ears." Natural religion points darkly to God, as 
comprehending in Himself in some way what the case is felt 
to require, and brings all to the momentous conclusion: "Be- 
hold the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom, and to depart from 
evil, that is understanding." But to give full effect to this 
conclusion, the voice of revelation must be added to the voice 
of nature. The supernatural must make itself known, not as 
a notion or thought merely, but as an actual reality, compre- 
hending in it the very end itself for which man is thus required 
to live. This has been done, as we know, by the Gospel ; 
which is to be regarded as a single revelation, shining more 
and more "as a light in a dark place" through the times of 
the Old Testament, till it burst forth finally with full effulgence 
in Him who is the "sun of righteousness," who, by the myste- 
ry of his incarnation, became himself among men the full man- 
ifestation of the truth under a living personal form ; who, by 
his death and resurrection, "brought life and immortality to 
light," and who now reigns " Head over all things to the Church," 
a Prince and Saviour at the right hand of God, to give repen- 
tance and remission of sins, redemption and eternal salvation, 
to all who draw near to God in his name. " God, who, at 
sundry times and in divers manners, spake in time past unto 
the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken 
unto us by his Son." 

To say now that this glorious Gospel of the Blessed God 
places the chief end of man, the only true and proper destina- 
tion of his life, in an order of things which is above and be- 
yond the present world, is simply to declare what no one in 
his senses pretends to dispute. The only difficulty is, that 
the sense and meaning of it in this view are so common, so 
universally at hand, so much a matter of course, that the 
thought, by its very familiarity, fails to gain with most persons 
any distinct attention. Not only is it assumed throughout, 
that the constitution of nature is destined to pass away, and 
that the soul of man is formed for eternity ; but the ground is 
everywhere taken, also, that the world, as it now stands, is 



12 

under a curse, that the relation men hold to it naturally in 
their present state is the result of an original universal apos- 
tacy or fall, by which they have lost their proper relation to 
God and their right to eternal life, that it is in these circum- 
stances under the power of Satan, and subject to a law of sin 
and death, and that there is no room, therefore, to conceive of 
any harmony or agreement between its interests and purposes, 
in such view, and the true last object of man's creation. All 
this comes before us abundantly in the general teaching of the 
Bible ; but most of all, with overwhelming emphasis, in the 
actual life of our Lord Jesus Christ. In him we see the truth 
itself, confronted in living form with the fallen world in the 
midst of which he moved without sin ; and in no other way, 
certainly, could the full sense of what this world is in its rela- 
tion to our human life generally be so effectually brought home 
to our minds. He came to seek and to save that which was 
lost, by conquering death and him that had the power of death, 
and by revealing or bringing to pass in and through his own 
person the kingdom of heaven, in which room is made for the 
complete fulfilment of man's destiny in a higher order of life 
that shall never come to an end. In calling us to such glory 
and honor and immortality, the Gospel, in the very nature of 
the case, requires us to enter into his spirit, to walk in his 
steps, to propose to ourselves the same supernatural end, and 
to aim at reaching it by renouncing and forsaking the present 
world. "Seek ye first," it is said, "the kingdom of God and 
his righteousness." — "He that seeketh his life, shall lose it." 
— " The kingdom of heaven is like unto treasure hid in a field, 
the which when a man hath found he hideth, and for joy thereof 
goeth and selleth all that he hath, and buyeth that field." — 
"Be not afraid of them that kill the body, and after that have 
no more that they can do; but I will forewarn you whom ye 
shall fear : Fear him, which after he hath killed, hath power 
to cast into hell; yea, I say unto you, Fear him." — "One 
thing is needful ; and Mary hath chosen that good part, which 
shall not be taken away from her." — " Sell that ye have, and 
give alms : provide yourselves bags which wax not old, a trea- 
sure in the heavens that faileth not, where no thief approach- 
eth, neither moth corrupteth. For where your treasure is, 
there will your heart be also." — "For what is a man profited, 
if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul ? or 
what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?" — "Verily, 
verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth 



13 

on him that sent me hath everlasting life, and shall not come 
into condemnation ; but is passed from death unto life." — "I 
am the resurrection and the life: he that believeth in me, 
though he were dead, yet shall he live ; and whosoever liveth 
and believeth in me shall never die." — "These things have I 
spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the 
world ye shall have tribulation ; but be of good cheer ; I have 
overcome the world." These are specimens merely of the way, 
in which Christ continually enforces the thought, that men are 
formed for an eternal destiny, and that this is to be reached 
only through himself as "the way, the truth, and the life," by 
giving up this world and living supremely for another. And 
so throughout the New Testament, the idea of Christianity is 
made to consist, especially, just in this, that we are saved from 
the vanity and misery of a simply natural life, and placed in 
real, felt communication with a life that is supernatural, of 
which Christ is the source and the Holy Ghost the medium, 
and which carries in it thus the sure guaranty of an everlast- 
ing victory over all the powers of sin and death and hell. 

The true destiny of man, the grand object and purpose of 
his existence, being thus not in the present world at all, but in 
an order of things which is out of it, above it and beyond it, 
and so in relation to it strictly supernatural, it becomes at 
once, of itself, plain, that no one can live to purpose, who does 
not know and acknowledge this end in its own proper character, 
so as to make it, in reality, the governing power of his life. 
It is not enough that we have been created for such end ; nor 
yet that we may see and feel the necessity of it, as something 
beyond this world. The case calls for purpose and will, in 
view of an object which is known to be real. This comes be- 
fore us here in the form of a supernatural revelation, brought 
to its full accomplishment in Christ : and the power by which 
we are set in actual communication with it, is what we denom- 
inate faith, " the substance of things hoped for, the evidence 
of things not seen." Only where the soul comes to under- 
stand its true destination in this way, and is led to regard and 
follow it with active resolution as a supreme end, can there be 
room to speak of it as fulfilling, in any measure, the object of 
its existence. Human life universally must be regarded as a 
failure, no matter what it may seem to accomplish in any other 
view, if it be not ordered in harmony thus with its own proper 
purpose and design, as something which is to be reached in 
another world and not in the present. 



14 

This, then, is the summit of all education, the perfection of 
knowledge and wisdom, that a man should comprehend and 
practically pursue the true end of his being, by seeking first 
the kingdom of God and his righteousness. It is so, not sim- 
ply from the worth of the object, in itself considered, as weighed 
against all other interests, but still more immediately, also, 
because it serves to bring into the soul, at once, order, harmony, 
light, freedom, and strength, by setting it in right relation to 
the law of its own life. All things are beautiful and strong in 
their place, only as they obey the law of their nature, stand in 
their appointed sphere, and fulfill their original destination ; 
and so man, as made at first in the image of God and formed 
for immortality, can never be true to himself in any stage of 
his existence, in any sphere or department of his life, except 
as he is brought to live supremely for this supernatural end 
and no other. This is for him emphatically the truth, the 
fundamental reality of things as they are and ought to be, in 
the apprehension of which as a living fact consists the idea of 
all wisdom rightly so called. For wisdom, as distinguished 
from mere knowledge or science, has to do with actual life, 
with truth in its practical relations to the will, as well as in 
its merely theoretic relations to the understanding; and it 
necessarily reaches its highest form, accordingly, where it 
comes to the perception and acknowledgment of what is in 
reality the chief end of our life. Hence it is said, that the 
fear of the Lord, which is only another name for religion, or 
the practical sense of our relations to God and another world, 
is the beginning of wisdom ; for the simple reason, that here 
begins, in fact, for man, all apprehension of that which is for 
him the actual truth of his own nature, and so the true sense 
and meaning also of the universe to which he belongs. The 
living sense of this comprehension in an economy which is 
higher than nature, and the issues of which belong to eternity, 
carrying along with it the practical submission of the soul to 
its authority, is literally both the commencement and the perpetu- 
al foundation and ground of all right thinking, no less than all 
right acting, on the part of men, in any and every direction. 
This is to be in the truth, and so to possess it under its own 
highest and only complete form, instead of having only the 
notion or shadow of it in the understanding. Such right pos- 
ture with regard to the actual order and end of our own being 
is of more account than any condition besides, for understand- 
ing whatever pertains to the welfare and dignity of our life, 






15 

whether in this world or in that which is to come. "If any 
man will to do my will," our Saviour says, — if it be his mind 
and purpose to be thus in the truth — "he shall know of the 
doctrine, whether it be of God." And of the same import is 
that most significant word: "The light of the body is the eye: 
if therefore thine eye be single, the whole body shall be full of 
light ; but if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of 
darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, 
how great is that darkness." All depends on the inward bent 
and habit of the soul with regard to its own proper destination, 
whether it be itself in conformity thus with the law of truth, 
or under the power of a lie. In this last case, the condemna- 
tion is, we are told, "that light is come into the world, and 
men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were 
evil." Their unbelief is simply the result of their wish and 
determination to make the present world their end and portion. 
To men of this sort Christ says: "because I tell you the truth, 
ye believe me not. — He that is of God, heareth God's words; 
y.e therefore hear them not, because ye are not of God." The 
minds of such, according to St. Paul, are blinded by the god 
of this world, "lest the light of the glorious Gospel of Christ, 
who is the image of God, should shine unto them ;" for which 
reason the reigning course of this world is said also, in another 
place, to be "according to the prince of the power of the air, 
the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience." 
St. John abounds in the same thought. Truth with him is al- 
ways life. " We know that we are of God," he writes, " and 
the whole world lieth in wickedness. And we know that the 
Son of God is come, and hath given us an understanding, that 
we may know him that is true ; and we are in him that is true, 
even in his Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God and eter- 
nal life." To be on the outside of this supernatural system of 
grace, in which is comprehended the highest relations and in- 
terests, and so the highest realities, of the proper life of man, 
is to be by that very fact involved in all falsehood and error. 
The error is not a false proposition simply, for the understand- 
ing ; nor yet a partial mistake only of purpose and practice at 
some particular point ; it embraces the entire man, mind, soul, 
and body, we may say, and turns his whole existence into a 
falsehood. He becomes by means of it, and remains continu- 
ally, a living personal lie. What room can there be in a case 
so dreadful as this, to speak rationally of knowledge, learning, 
wisdom, under any different form ? How can any amount of 



16 

science and culture avail to redeem from vanity, a life which 
is thus false throughout to its constitution, and which is itself 
no better than a hollow dream, and for which in this state the 
whole world must prove to be at last but shadow and sham ? 
With what depth of meaning the Bible applies to every one, 
who is under the power of such a false life, the emphatic title 
Fool! All other forms of folly are in truth small, compared 
with this. 

Here indeed is wisdom, the crowning excellency of all edu- 
cation, and of all knowledge and art besides, that a man should 
be in the truth, and know that which is for him in reality the 
deepest meaning of the universe, by having it for the very 
form of his own life. How easy it is to see, that the smallest 
measure of understanding in this form is of infinitely more 
worth, than the largest stores of learning or skill in any differ- 
ent view. What shall it profit a man, we may say, though he 
should know the whole world besides, and have no true knowl- 
edge of himself? What truth can there be in any other science 
or art for him, to whom the " light of life " is wanting in his 
own soul ? We have no right to undervalue education and 
learning in any direction ; and I have no disposition to do so cer- 
tainly on the present occasion ; but we must not shrink still 
from seeing and owning here what is after all, but the simple 
truth, namely, that no conceivable amount of such culture can 
deserve to be placed for one moment in comparison with the 
inward habit of piety which consists in fearing God and keep- 
ing his commandments. Without this, the greatest philosopher 
is less wise in fact than the unlettered rustic to whom it may 
belong. The science of the saints is something far more high 
and glorious than any mere learning of the schools. It has to 
do with vastly superior objects, moves in loftier and wider re- 
gions of thought, and brings into the soul an immeasurably 
clearer illumination. " The entrance of thy words giveth light," 
says the Psalmist, " it giveth understanding unto the simple." 
The revelation of the Logos, the Divine Word, by the mystery 
of the incarnation, " in whom are hid all the treasures of wis- 
dom and knowledge," the mpst pure and perfect manifestation 
of truth in the world, was not to teach men the hidden secrets 
of nature, the laws of matter, the principles of government, or 
any other knowledge of this sort belonging merely to the pres- 
ent life, but to set them in right relation to God and their eter- 
nal destiny; something which for this very reason must be ac- 
counted of more consequence than any other kind of knowledge 



17 

which it is possible for them to possess. " In him was life" — 
not theory, merely, or outward doctrine — " and the life was 
the light of men," served to bring them into the truth itself 
under its highest form. " I am the light of the world," our 
Saviour says accordingly; "he that followeth me, shall not 
walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life." Such illu- 
mination is, of course, practical. There is no separation here 
between the understanding and the will. Knowledge is 
at the same time charity ; without which, all gifts and accom- 
plishments are pronounced by the apostle Paul to be of 
no worth whatever. "With this comes also true freedom and 
strength. " If ye continue in my word," Christ says, "ye shall 
know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." To know, 
in this case, is to be at the same time in what is known ; and it 
is easy enough to see, how such living union with the truth, 
such settlement and consolidation of the mind, on the true last 
ground of its own being, where it is set in harmony also with 
the will of Grod and the actual order of things, must prove at 
the same time, its happy emancipation, so far as this right or- 
der prevails, from all false authority and power ; and how ut- 
terly impossible it is, I may add, that liberty should exist at 
all, or be anything more than an empty chimera, under any 
other imaginable character and form. And to be thus in the 
truth, is to be strong also in the only proper and full sense of 
the word. We often hear it said, that knowledge is power ; 
and this is true to a certain extent, no doubt, of all merely sec- 
ular knowledge, as related to the ends of the present life. It 
is more in this respect than money, which is power also in a 
very high degree. In our own day especially, science rules 
the earth, and is fast subduing it to the service of secular pur- 
poses and ends. But it is after all only where knowledge takes 
its highest form, in the character of that practical, heavenly 
wisdom, which consists in understanding and acknowledging 
the true end of life as something to be found only in God and 
the eternal world, that it comes to be, at the same time, what 
is truly comprehended in the idea of power for man. Short of 
this, all science and art are at best but triumphs of mind over 
matter, in the sphere of nature itself. What is really needed, 
however, is that the soul should be brought to surmount the 
life of nature altogether, to acquire the mastery of itself, and 
to overcome the world, in the prosecution of its own proper 
destiny beyond the grave. For every purpose of this sort, all 
such secular science and art are perfectly powerless. But here 






18 

precisely comes into view, the true nature and dignity of the 
power that is comprehended in a practical obedience to the 
truth as it is in Jesus Christ. Paul is beyond comparison 
greater than Alexander or Julius Csesar. " He that is slow to 
anger is better than the mighty ; and he that ruleth his spirit 
than he that taketh a city." To walk in the Spirit, so as not 
to fulfil the lusts of the flesh, is more a great deal than to tun- 
nel mountains and bridge vallies, curb the lightning and im- 
prison steam, for the transitory uses of trade. " This is the 
victory that overcometh the world," says St. John, " even our 
faith. Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that be- 
lie veth that Jesus is the Son of God ?" 

No wonder, that this heavenly wisdom, carrying in it thus 
the highest perfection of man's life, should be so commended 
to our regard as it is in the Holy Scriptures, and that such 
glowing terms should be employed to set forth its praise. The 
price of it is indeed above rubies. The topaz of Ethiopia can- 
not equal it, neither may it be valued with pure gold. " Hap- 
py is the man that findeth wisdom, and the man that getteth 
understanding : For the merchandise of it is better than the 
merchandise of silver, and the gain thereof than fine gold. 
She is more precious than rubies ; and all the things thou canst 
desire are not to be compared unto her. Length of days is in 
her right hand ; and in her left hand riches and honor. Her 
ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace. 
She is a tree of life to them that lay hold upon her ; and hap- 
py is every one that retaineth her." 

The whole subject reveals to us the nature, necessity, and 
value of Faith. The chief end of man, the last meaning of his 
life, is not comprehended in the present order of things, the 
passing diorama in the midst of which he is here carried for- 
ward continually to the grave. It lies in another world, in a 
system of things which is beyond and above nature, and so be- 
yond the range and reach also of all merely natural under- 
standing and knowledge. To be known and felt at all then, 
this supernatural economy must be exhibited to us in the form 
of a Divine revelation ; which we are required to accept simply 
in this character, in order that we may make full proof of its 
power. Opinion, speculation, dreamy sentiment, in the case, 
are not enough. The world in question is not made up of neg- 
atives simply and abstractions, but of facts, realities, and actu- 
al living relations, which need to be apprehended as they are, 
that we may be saved by the sense of them from the vanity of 
our present life ; and this precisely is what is accomplished for 



19 

us by faith. Through the word of God, and especially through 
this word presented to us bodily in the person of our Lord and 
Saviour Jesus Christ, it sets us in real communication with 
things unseen and eternal, and makes it possible for us to have 
such regard to them as we ought, in working out the fearfully 
solemn problem of life. It is not the product in any way of 
reason or logic. These so far as they are concerned with nat- 
ural things, or with the order only of the present world, have 
no power to reach the supernatural ; and so far as they may be 
capable of being exercised upon this also, when known, have 
no power ever to originate any suc|i knowledge. Facts here, 
as always, must go before intelligence and thought ; and knowl- 
edge consequently must follow faith. We see then the nature 
of this faculty. It is the power of being firmly assured, on the 
testimony of God who cannot lie, that there is such a world of 
grace and glory as is set before us by the Gospel, not to be 
seen by mortal eyes, but yet surrounding us at all points, and 
continually near at hand, in which, and in which only, is to be 
accomplished the true object and end of our existence. It is 
the power of acknowledging the supernatural, the miraculous, 
the real presence of possibilities, and powers, and actual oper- 
ations, that go beyond all the resources of nature and surmount 
all its laws, in a new order of life which is made to be actually 
at hand in the mystery of the Church, through the death, and 
resurrection, and glorification of the Son of God. On the 
necessity and importance of this sublime capacity, this faculty 
of believing realities which transcend and confound sense, more 
need not be said. The case speaks for itself. If the true end 
of our life, and so its universal significance and worth, lie not 
in the present world but in another ; and if all wisdom for us 
be comprehended in the practical perception and acknowledg- 
ment of our proper destination in such view ; what terms shall 
sufficiently express the value of faith, the only power on our 
side by which it is possible for us to burst the confines of time 
and sense, so as to communicate with what is beyond in a real 
and not simply imaginary and notional way. In the nature 
of the case, it is the gift of God ; and well does it deserve the 
title precious, applied to it by St. Peter ; for it lies at the 
foundation of all that wisdom, whose price we have already 
seen to be above comparison, and is the source, in a certain 
sense, of every grace and perfection for the human soul. With- 
out faith, it is impossible to please God, and in vain also to 
think of using life to good purpose in any other way. In such 



20 

condition, man appears necessarily incomplete always, his na- 
ture shorn of its proper glory, his mind looking forth upon us 
at best in dismal and dim eclipse. Let this thought sink deep- 
ly into your hearts. It is something greater really and truly 
to believe the articles of the Apostles' Creed, every one of 
which is a mystery transcending the whole order of nature ? 
than to know all that is taught in the best colleges and univer- 
sities of the land. No literary diploma can ever match in hon- 
or that word to Peter : " Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona ; for 
flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father 
which is in heaven !" 0£ the same glorious distinction our 
Saviour speaks, when he says : " I thank thee Father, Lord of 
heaven and earth, that thou hast hid these things from the wise 
and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes !" Well 
might that great student of Nature, the late Sir Humphry 
Davy, tired out with her same everlasting response to all the 
questionings of science, It is not in me ! It is not with me ! 
make the memorable declaration towards the close of his life, 
that he envied no man any other possession whatever, such as 
wealth, learning, or worldly distinction, but would cheerfully 
give all for the one simple privilege of being able to believe 
firmly and steadily the realities of another world. That in- 
deed is something better than all knowledge, and power, and 
riches, and glory besides. 

You need this habitual, practical sense of the supernatural, 
that you may not walk in darkness and miss the true end of 
life, regarded as a purely private and personal interest. But 
you need it no less, in order that you may be able rightly to un- 
derstand the living world around you, and so be prepared to 
act a right part in it in your generation. No man is at liberty 
to live simply and only for himself. Least of all, we may say, 
is he at liberty to do so, on whom God, in his providence, has 
been pleased to bestow special gifts and powers, especially in 
the way of education. You have not been educated for your- 
selves alone, nor mainly, but for the use and service of others. 
The very idea of a liberal education forbids the thought of its 
being devoted merely to selfish purposes and ends, under the 
low base form particularly which these carry with them for the 
most part in the present world. It is degraded, profaned, and 
made grossly vulgar and illiberal, by every association of this 
sort. But to live for the world really and to purpose, we must 
have clearly before our minds its true constitution, the actual 
meaning of it, the fundamental law of its being, its absolute 



21 

destination and end ; just what we need, in one word, in the 
•case of our separate personal life, that it may be ordered Avise- 
ly and with effect. Self-knowledge here, and the knowledge 
of the world, condition each other, and go hand in hand to- 
gether. If we look at the human world simply as a natural 
organization, a system of existence whose meaning and end 
hold mainly in the present life, our interest in it, our care for 
it, our devotion to its service, will assume necessarily a corres- 
ponding form. We shall lose our thoughts and calculations 
altogether in the sense of its temporal relations, and can hard- 
ly fail to make all at last of simply material interests. But if 
this hypothesis be in itself completely false, as we know that 
it must be in fact if Christianity be more than a dream ; if it 
be certain that the chief end and last destination of the human 
race, collectively taken, as well of the single man, is not in the 
order of nature at all, but in a strictly supernatural economy 
which holds above and beyond this.; then must all such think- 
ing and acting as are conditioned by that other false and 
wrong supposition be themselves false also, not according to 
the actual truth of things, and so of comparatively no worth in 
the end. We must have firm faith in the invisible and eternal 
world, in the grand and glorious mysteries of the Christian 
creed, in order that we may have any firm position, or any 
sure and safe judgment, or any power of right speech and ac- 
tion, in our relations to the present world. 

And especially may this be regarded as necessary, Young 
-Gentlemen, for the particular period and time, in which you 
are called to live. 

We hear much said, in glorification of the present age. It 
is fashionable in certain quarters, to speak of it as the perfec- 
tion of all ages, and to magnify the spirit of it as better and 
greater than the spirit of any other period that has ever yet 
been known in the world. It is glorified as an age of knowl- 
edge, of freedom, of rapidly advancing civilization. It is an 
age of vast action and talk ; an age of astonishing discoveries 
and inventions ; an age in which the arts of peace are every- 
where successfully cultivated, giving rise to visions of outward 
prosperity that never entered formerly into the human mind. 
It is an age of progress and reform, big with the idea of its 
own mission to rehabilitate man in the possession of his natural 
rights, and to bring to an end all sorts of political oppression 
and abuse. In no part of the world, moreover, may it be said 
to be more at home, than just here in America. The genius of 



/ 



22 

the age is emphatically the genius of this rising republic. 
Here it reigns on all sides with a power that seems to carry all 
before it, and which it is considered for the most part, a privi- 
lege to honor and obey. Happy, as the song runs, is the 
young man, who enters upon life, on American soil, in the 
middle of the nineteenth century ! He has only to yield him- 
self to the genius of the country, and the spirit of the age, that 
he may live to purpose and do well. Let him only spread out 
his canvass boldly and broadly to these favoring gales ; they 
will waft his bark happily over the sea of life, and bring it final- 
ly to its right end. 

; Never was there, however, under such plausible form, a 
more perfect delusion. The age is not thus infallible and safe. 
On the contrary, it is made up, to a terrible extent, beyond 
most ages that have been, of falsehood and error, sophistry 
and sham. This becomes evident, just as soon as we bring the 
strong light of eternity to bear upon it, by making, earnest 
with the thought, that man is formed for a supernatural desti- 
ny, and for the accomplishment of this requires a real redemp- 
tion, that shall deliver him from the power of this present evil 
world, and engage him to follow after life and immortality in 
another. The spirit of the age is always at war in reality with 
the actual truth of things, as we find this exhibited in the Gos- 
pel and in the Church ; there is a necessary contradiction be- 
tween this world ('o amv tov ko^ov tovtov — the present seculum,) and 
the kingdom of God ; the course of the world is in and of itself 
" according to the Prince of the power of the air, the spirit 
that now worketh in the children of disobedience" — in all those, 
namely, who do not submit themselves with the obedience of 
Faith to the mystery of salvation in Christ. But it is pecu- 
liar in some measure to our time, that the world in its own or- 
der affects to be itself now the very form in which the true 
ends and purposes of Christianity are to be reached. The 
spirit of the age, directly or indirectly, seeks to pass itself off 
as an angel of light, "flying in the midst of heaven, and hav- 
ing the everlastiog Gospel to preach unto them that dwell on 
the earth, to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and peo- 
ple." In its general character, however, it remains just what 
the same power has always been over against the true kingdom 
of Christ. It has no faith in the supernatural ; except as this 
may be brought to resolve itself into some sort of gnostic ab- 
straction or dream ; in which form it professes to hold it in 
high account, taking credit to itself in so doing for its own 



23 

spirituality. But its spirituality, alas, ends always in mere 
spiritualism, the working of the simply natural mind pretend- 
ing to soar above its own sphere of the flesh, but never getting 
out of it in fact. For the Spirit, in the sense of the Gospel, 
the supernatural under a real form, the mystery of the creed 
and of the Church, this eminently spiritualistic spirit of the 
age has no sense or organ whatever. It eschews all that, and 
holds it in abomination. This notion of the real presence of 
supernatural powers in the Christian Church for supernatural 
ends, involving as it does, necessarily, the subordination of the 
whole order of nature to a higher economy that can be appre- 
hended only by faith, is precisely that which it has no power 
to endure ; and the presence of which, wherever it may come 
seriously into view, proves always to be for it like the touch of 
Ithuriel's spear, causing it to start up instantly in its true an- 
tichristian shape. However bland, liberal, and sweet, it can 
show itself towards the Christian profession, so long as this 
may be content to walk arm in arm with it in the fellowship of 
merely secular interests and aims, such as useful knowledge, 
general education, good government, humanitarian philanthro- 
phy, and all sorts of moral reform, the whole case is at once 
changed the moment it is presumed in any quarter to make 
earnest with realities, which are supposed to reach into anoth- 
er world. Then your bland liberal is at once converted into 
an intolerant fanatic. If it were Mohammedanism, Mormon- 
ism, anything else under the sun, he could bear it and have 
some patience with it ; but to be confronted in such style with 
what claims to be the actual presence of the supernatural as a 
real force in the world, having to do with the last and highest 
destination of men in another life, is more than he finds it pos- 
sible for a wise man to endure — especially in the middle of the 
nineteenth century. It is to revive the superstition of the 
Middle Ages ; to turn religion into mechanism and mummery ; 
to open the door for priestcraft and spiritual despotism ; to own 
a power on earth above civil government and the sovereignty 
of the State, which in this case, moreover, is generally taken 
to resolve itself finally into the sovereignty of the peo- 
ple. It is at once treason thus to the sacred cause of freedom, 
popular rights, political economy, and modern civilization gen- 
erally ; and so far as it prevails must serve to keep back the 
millennium of the world's regeneration under this temporal and 
natural order, God only can tell how long. Does not the spirit 
of the age do well to be angry with pretensions, which thus 



I 



24 

stultify its highest wisdom and turn the whole pride of its life 
into open shame ? If there he any truth in these pretensions, 
it stands convicted of being a wholesale universal lie ; and to 
save itself from this, being secretly conscious in fact of its own 
falsehood, it has no alternative but to retort the charge on the 
source from which it proceeds, and then to rage and storm, 
calumniate and misrepresent, as it best can, for the purpose of 
giving it effect. 

Tried in this way, the spirit of the present period is easily 
enough found to be predominantly set on natural interests and 
ends, as the chief purpose of man's life, to the exclusion of 
such as are supernatural. It is rationalistic, humanitarian, 
politico-economical. Religion itself is required by it to offi- 
ciate in the service of the flesh, and eternity is made to stoop 
obsequiously to the behests of time. For the realities of faith 
are substituted the spectral phantoms of opinion — or the dismal 
irony, shall we call it, of demoniacal delusions. Materialism 
bears rampant rule on all sides. The true victory over the 
world for man, is held to be more and more, not by any such 
supernatural process of the Spirit as was dreamed of by saints 
and martyrs of the olden time, but by mastering the elements 
of nature, multiplying machinery, promoting the facilities of 
commerce and trade, and making the earth to serve, as widely 
as possible, the comfort and well-being simply of the present 
life. Man is held practically, if not in set theory, to be suffi- 
cient for his own ends, without the intervention of any higher 
help than that which is offered to him in his natural constitu- 
tion. What he is supposed to need, is education, general 
knowledge, proper room for the exercise of his rights, the ben- 
efit especially of republican institutions, and the practice of 
the natural virtues in the name of religion. Secular ends, 
temporal interests, the judgments of the merely natural mind 
in the form of reigning fashion and opinion, are made the 
standard of truth, and applied as a measure even to the con- 
tents of revelation itself. In all directions the most solemn 
points of faith and duty are settled by principles and maxims, 
which overthrow the idea altogether of any positive authority 
in the world that is higher than the world itself. Religion 
ceases thus to be the daughter of the skies, and loses her holy 
mission in what must be considered at best, enthusiasm for a 
simply earthly ideal. 

Striking and most truly instructive exemplification of this 
was presented not long since, when the spirit of the age seemed 



25 

to find for a moment among us a fit avatar in the form of 
Louis Kossuth, who appeared on our shores as a martyr of 
the Hungarian rebellion, and a representative of the general 
cause of revolutionary liberty throughout Europe. It is still 
but as it were the other day, since the ears of the whole nation 
were stunned with the noise of his presence, as he passed from 
one part of the country to another, in a sort of grand triumphal 
procession, the cynosure, seemingly, of all eyes and the idol of 
all hearts. Seldom indeed has the delirium of man-worship 
been carried to a more ridiculous and fulsome extent. His 
words were received as oracles of wisdom ; his oriental bombast 
was taken for the inspiration of a prophet. To speak against 
him, or even to be ominously silent in his praise, was held to 
be little less than blasphemy towards God and treason to the 
dearest rights and interests of man. For was he not the in- 
carnation of the holy cause of freedom, a full living personifi- 
cation of the glorious conception of man's destiny, which forms 
the very life and soul of the modern revolutionary spirit 
throughout the world ? And did he not invoke besides the au- 
thority of the Bible, the genius of Christianity itself, as in full 
unison with his own mission and cause ? Was he not a preach- 
er of righteousness to the nations, and a new Messiah sent 
forth for their redemption and salvation ? Why then should 
he not be worshipped and glorified, like Diana of the Ephesians, 
or the colossal image set up by Nebuchadnezzar on the plain of 
Dura ! So for a time, as we all know, the furor ran. It was 
a perfect stampede, not of dumb cattle, but of rational and civ- 
ilized men ; which, however, like all stampedes, was doomed soon 
to come to an end. The practical tact, and sound common 
sense, of the nation, acted upon by a quick apprehension also, 
no doubt, of its own material interests, came in due time to its 
relief, and gave it power to see, finally, that it had been play- 
ing the fool. Then its idol was suffered to fall silently into 
contempt ; and before the end of a single year took its depar- 
ture, under the metamorphosis of "Mr. Alexander Smith," 
without so much of a Good bye sirs ! as even to pay its land- 
lady's bill. But after all, the main significance of humbug, re- 
garded as a mirror of the reigning mind of the age, cannot be 
said to be overthrown by this explosion ; for the explosion was 
not the result properly of any insight into the essential falsehood 
of the idea which Kossuth represented, but came to pass rath- 
er through considerations of expediencey and interest which 
were connected with it only in. an accidental way. It was 



26 

Yankee cunning, more than Christian principle, that turned 
the scale at last in favor of conservatism and common sense. 
His doctrine of " intervention " was found to be practically 
impolitic and unsafe ; and so it was voted out of good company, 
and may be considered, for the present, as having gone its 
way. But the principle of it, the pretended Divine right of 
rebellion and revolution, the demoniacal idea that the people 
may upset all governments at their pleasure which do not hap- 
pen to square with their own notions of liberty, has not been 
denounced as a general thing even by those who have taken 
most credit to themselves for opposing the use which it has 
been attempted to make of it in this way ; and what is worst of 
all, the true relation of the whole affair to Christianity, would 
seem to remain still as much as ever out of view. 

This is indeed deplorable. The political nonsense of the 
demonstration was as nothing, in comparison with the wrong 
it did to the religion of Jesus Christ ; and until this be gener- 
ally seen and felt, we have full right to refer to it as a picture, 
which is still of force to illustrate the subject now in hand — the 
wrong position, namely, and false spirit of the age, as tried by 
the supernatural standard of the Gospel. 

It will be borne in mind, that a very active disposition was 
shown, on the part of the Protestant religious press generally 
and of the so called evangelical ministry in our leading cities, 
to identify the cause and spirit of the Hungarian chief with 
the very soul of Christianity itself. His notion of liberty was 
taken to be of one and the same order precisely with the free- 
dom that is preached in the New Testament. His " brother- 
hood of nations " and " solidarity of humanity," were allowed 
to represent in good earnest the last aim of Christianity in the 
present world, as well as to overshadow completely its higher 
regards to another. Nothing could be clearer than the fact, 
that with him all faith in the invisible and eternal was the 
merest naturalism, and nothing more ; that he saw in the Bible 
at best but a code of high moral maxims, capable of being 
turned to good account by the natural reason of men for social 
and particular ends ; that socialistic or humanitarian philan- 
thropism made up his whole conception of Christian charity ; 
and that he was of one mind substantially, in his view of man's 
destiny, and of the problem of the world, with Ledru Rollin, 
Mazzini, and the leaders generally of the Red Republican 
movement in Europe.* In no one of his speeches, was there 

* It would seem to need only the most ordinary spiritual discernment, to 



27 

expressed a particle of reverence for the Word made Flesh or 
for the mystery of the Holy Catholic Church. And yet in 
spite of all this, nay it might seem on the very strength of it, 
he was urged and encouraged from all sides to claim for his 
cause the special sympathy of heaven, and to consider himself 
a sort of living commentary on the inmost sense of the Gospel, 
as well as a martyr and confessor for its truth before the eyes 
of the whole civilized world. A little clap-trap in glorification 
of the Bible and Private Judgment, some show of respect for 
the Sabbath,- (too thin to wear any time,) the compliment of 
attending church occasionally, (where he was not unlikely to 
have his ears tickled with something preached or prayed in his 
own praise) all joined with everlasting changes rung on the 
hackneyed and unmeaning themes of liberty, human rights, 
universal brotherhood, and the power of the world, if it were 
only let alone to govern and save itself, was enough, it seemed, 
and more than enough, to steal away the senses of his undis- 
cerning religious admirers, and to gull them into the belief that 
he was a sort of hero and saint combined, who had been raised 
up specially by God to usher in a new era for Protestantism 
and Evangelical Christianity on both sides of the Atlantic. 
His interpretations of Scripture, generally flat enough, were 
listened to as though they were felt to drop from the skies. 
He was able, it appeared, to teach our divines theology, as well 

see and feel the truth of this general charge in all his speeches. They are 
animated throughout by a spirit of Paganism, -without the slightest tinge of 
Christianity. His memorable prayer, at the grave of the Magyar heroes "who 
fell in the battle of Rapoylna. may stand as a fit monument of his mind in this 
respect. It runs thiis : — " Almighty Lord ! God of the -warriors of Arpad ! 
look down from thy starry throne upon thy imploring servant, from -whose 
lips the prayer of millions ascends to thy heaven, praising the unsearchable 
power of thine Omnipotence. God, over me shines thy sun, and beneath 
me repose the relics of my fallen heroic brethren ; above my head the sky is 
blue, and under my feet the earth is dyed red with the holy blood of the chil- 
dren of our ancestors. Let the animating beams of thy sun fall here, that 
flowers may spring up from the blood, so that these hulls of departed beings 
may not moulder unadorned. God of our fathers, and God of the nations ! 
hear and bless the voice of our warriors, and let the arm and the soul of brave 
nations thunder to break the iron hand of tyranny, as it forges its chains. 
As a freeman I kneel on these fresh graves ; by the remains of my brothers. 
By such a sacrifice as theirs, thy earth would be consecrated, were it all stain- 
ed with sin. God ! on this holy soil, above these graves, no race of slaves 
can live. Father ! Father of our fathers ! mighty over myriads ! Almighty 
God of the heaven, the earth, and the seas ! from these bones springs a glo- 
ry whose radiance is on the brow of my people. Hallow their dust with thy 
grace, that the ashes of my fallen heroic brethren may rest in peace ! Leave 
us not, great God of battles ! In the holy name of the nations, praised be 
Thy Omnipotence ! Amen." 



28 

as our senators wisdom. Sayings and sentences from his lips 
on the subject of religion, now happily forgotten, were caught 
up as apothegms or gnomes pregnant with celestial wisdom, 
and sent whizzing and blazing like so many fire-balls through 
the length of the land. It was not enough for the religious 
papers to praise, laud, and bless his name, from week to week. 
Pulpits, in many cases, became profane and churches were des- 
ecrated, for the same end. Clerical delegations, in New York, 
Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington City, Pittsburgh, Cincin- 
nati, press into his presence for the very purpose- of flattering 
his vanity, assuring him of their hearty sympathy, and bidding 
him God-speed in his revolutionary counsels and designs ; and 
he is allowed, on the other hand, openly to accept these con- 
gratulatory addresses, as a formal sanction given in the name 
of religion, by its supposed authorized exponents, to his whole 
character and mission and doctrine, (intervention hobby and 
all,) as being in full accordance with the genius of Christianity, 
and in all respects true to the mind of its glorious and adora- 
ble Founder. Doctors of Divinity, and grave Professors of 
Theology figured, among others, in these demonstrations, and 
helped as they could, to give them solemnity and eclat. If 
Kossuth was not convinced of his own title to be regarded as 
an apostle of the last and deepest sense of Christianity for the 
men of the Nineteenth Century, it was not the fault, certainly, 
of those who thus threw themselves as the representatives of 
American piety in his way. They . did all that could be well 
asked, to help him to this conclusion. 

Now the misery of all this is, not just that so vast a blun- 
der should ' have been committed in the name of religion, but 
that our religion should have been capable at all of being de- 
ceived, to so great an extent, in such gross way — and still 
more, that there should seem to be, even to this hour, so little 
sense of the true nature of the mistake. It is with the ideal 
which Kossuth was made for the moment to enshrine, far more 
than with the passing form of the shrine itself, that we are here 
concerned ; and looking at this, we find occasion enough in the 
case for the most painful and gloomy reflection. What must 
we think of a Christianity, arrogating to itself the highest 
character of evangelical purity and truth, which could so easily 
and readily find what it took for its own image in the princi- 
ples and pretensions of such a man ! It was bad enough that 
he should be compared with Washington. But to make him a 
representative of the doctrine and spirit of Jesus Christ, to ac- 



29 

cept his rliodomontade about liberty, and philanthrophy, and 
human rights, for the faith and charity which were preached by 
St. Paul, the lofty morals of St. Peter, or the divine breathings 
of St. John ; to see in the Gospel according to Kossuth the 
likeness, to hear in it the echo of that glorious creed for which 
the martyrs and confessors suffered in ancient times : how shall 
we rightly characterize an infatuation so monstrous as this, or 
how shall we explain it so as to save the honor and credit of 
the cause that could be carried away by it to so lamentable an 
extent ! Alas, the religious spirit of the age, as it reigns gen- 
erally in our evangelical sects, could not have been thus egre- 
giously imposed upon by so transparent a falsehood, (the demon 
of radicalism in such gossamer guise,) if it were not itself deep- 
ly and sadly infected with the power of the same lie. This is 
the portentous meaning of the transaction, which it well be- 
comes every thoughtful mind to lay seriously to heart ; and it 
is for the lesson it carries in it under such view, that I have 
considered it proper to hold it up for contemplation on the 
present occasion. May you be able to understand it well, and 
to bear it hereafter properly in recollection. 

If you would understand your duty to the world, and be 
able to live for it to any purpose in your generation, it is ne- 
cessary, first of all, that you should cultivate a firm and steady 
faith in the reality of its supernatural relations, and have re- 
gard continually to the destiny of man as formed for a higher 
state of existence. The great error of the age consists just in 
this, that it is not willing to acknowledge these relations ex- 
cept in a simply nominal way, and is led thus to ascribe to mere- 
ly natural interests and secular ends, as connected with human 
life, an importance which does not belong to them in fact. 
This is done to a great extent in the name of religion itself ; 
which is then always confounded more or less with zeal for such 
subordinate purposes and aims, while its own proper ends are 
in the same degree thrown into the shade. But no estimation 
of interests which belong only to this world, can ever be ac- 
cording to truth, or deserve to be relied upon practically, which 
is not conditioned by an active regard at the same time to the 
eternal destiny of men as that which is for them of supreme 
account. Nay, such lower interests, we may say, thus disso- 
ciated in thought from man's chief end, become in fact them- 
selves false, take the form not unfrequently of demoniacal 
delusions, and are entitled to no enthusiasm whatever. Noth- 
ing can be more hollow and fallacious, for this reason, than 



80 

much of the declamation we hear about education, useful knowl- 
edge, liberty, free institutions, and the right of self-govern- 
ment, as though such privileges in the order of nature were to 
be regarded as in and of themselves the first thing needful for 
humanity, or might be allowed to rule and control the idea of 
its destiny in every higher view. Learn to hold all such dec- 
lamation at its true value. Learn to distinguish well here, 
between the wisdom which comes from above, and that which 
is only from beneath. Have courage to see and own the truth. 
Socialism is not Christianity. It is not the design of the Gos- 
pel to subvert thrones and create republics. Secular ends are 
of just and right force, only as they are held in practical subor- 
dination to such as are supernatural and eternal ; and they fall 
over necessarily to the dominion of Satan, the god of this world 
and the father of lies, wherever this proportion ceases to be 
observed. The smallest measure of faith is of more value, 
than any amount of useful knowledge. Education is no bles- 
sing, but only a curse to society, if it be not based upon reli- 
gion, and animated throughout by the sense of its supreme au- 
thority in some positive form. Godless schools and colleges, 
Godless arts and sciences, as well as Godless political and so- 
cial institutions generally, carrying in them a relation simply, 
to the present world and its wants, and virtually ignoring the 
claims of another, deserve the abhorrence, and should excite 
the apprehension and fear of all good men. Not to see and 
feel all this, is itself a species of infidelity, which opens the way 
for the very worst disorders and mistakes. It is to set the 
natural practically above the supernatural ; which is to deny 
in fact the reality of the last altogether. It is to make hu- 
manity in and of itself, as it now stands, sufficient for its own 
ends ; which is such a lie as overthrows the whole Gospel, and 
necessarily turns into caricature all truth besides, by forcing it 
into false relations and proportions. Hence the universal affin- 
ity in which this style of thinking is found to stand with all 
sorts of rationalistic speculation, sectarian fanaticism, radical- 
ism, socialism, and wild revolutionary republicanism of the 
most openly anti-christian stamp. Here we have in truth the 
veritable Antichrist of the present age. Learn to know him, 
and to be aware of his devices. If you are to live wisely for 
your generation, it will depend much, very much, on this one 
counsel well kept in mind. 

Finally, to return again in conclusion, to what is more di- 
rectly personal in the application of our theme, let me exhort 



31 

you all to be true to your own proper destination, by seeking 
first, each one of you, for himself, the kingdom of God and his 
righteousness. As it was said once by a distinguished artist, 
to account for the pains he took with his work, I paint for 
eternity ; so let it be your care also, to live seriously and earn- 
estly, not for the world, which is now rapidly passing away, 
but for that which is to come. Look not at things which are 
seen and temporal, but at things which are not seen and eter- 
nal. Lay yourselves out to know God, to serve Him in the 
Gospel of his Son Jesus Christ, and to enter at last into the 
rewards of his heavenly kingdom. Do not count yourselves 
unworthy of eternal life. Let no man take from you your 
crown — the crown of glory and immortality to which you are 
called by the Gospel, and which has been purchased for you 
by the death and resurrection of the Son of God. Here is an 
object worthy of your highest ambition and most active zeal, 
in comparison with which the most dazzling visions of glory in 
this world are of as little worth as so much dust or chaff. Let 
it not be to you as a tale only that is told, or as an empty 
dream. Seek to have firm faith in the grand and glorious 
mysteries of the Christian Creed, as realities which are to you 
of infinitely greater account than all events and facts besides. 
Be not satisfied, in a case of such unutterable consequence, 
with faint impressions and feeble purposes and aims. Medi- 
tate on your own supernatural destiny. Think much of the 
vanity of the world, the shortness of life, the certainty of death, 
and the solemn retributions of the world to come. It has been 
well said, that the thought of eternity, brought home to the 
soul from day to day, is for every man the thought of all 
thoughts, which, if it do not make him wise, must show him to 
be mad. It is a whole volume of wisdom compressed into a 
single word. Read it much, I charge you, and study it well. 
Read it especially in the light of the simple, but unspeakably 
sublime annunciation: " God so loved the world, that he gave 
his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should 
not perish, but have everlasting life." Read it through the 
living commentary of that illustrious cloud of witnesses, apos- 
tles, prophets, martyrs, confessors, saints of all ages and climes, 
whose faith has already received its reward and who now from 
their heavenly seats look clown upon you with unceasing inter- 
est, and kindly beckon you to follow them in the path by which 
they have been themselves conducted to eternal glory. Read 
it above all at the foot of the Cross, where in the person of 



32 

Him who is the Truth and the Life, nailed upon it, crowned 
with thorns, covered with his own blood, and overwhelmed with 
reproach and contempt, the true sense of this world and the 
true sense of the next, the nothingness of the one and the in- 
finite importance of the other, are brought mto view as they 
could be by no representative besides. " Consider him that 
endured such contradiction of sinners " and "arm yourselves 
likewise with the same mind," that you may run the race of 
life with faith and patience to its proper goal, and receive at 
last the victor's palm and crown. " Whatsoever a man soweth, 
that shall he also reap : for he that soweth to his flesh, shall of 
the flesh reap corruption ; but he that soweth to the Spirit, 
shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting." 



